Meaning & Origins

From the word denoting the flower, Old English dægesēage ‘day's eye’, so called because it uncovers the yellow disc of its centre in the morning and closes its petals over it again at the end of the day. The name was used early on as a punning pet form of Margaret, by association with French Marguerite, which is both a version of that name and the word for the flower. It was taken up at the end of the 19th century as part of the general vogue for flower names, and has enjoyed a steady rise in popularity since the mid-1990s.